Reform on the rise as Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner quits

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, the first trailer from Emerald Fennell's film of Wuthering Heights is here, and Emily Bronte fans aren't impressed. But first, Reform UK is actively preparing for government, its former chairman has said, as the party continues to fly high in the polls and the Labour government struggles with multiple crises as Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner quits following a row over her tax affairs. Reform UK's annual conference begins in Birmingham today and here's leader Nigel Farage speaking.

0:52We are all ships rising on a turquoise tide headed ever closer towards winning the next general election. It's been a day of some considerable news. You simply can't get away, can you, from being the housing secretary and avoiding£40 ,000 of council tax. And it screams to entitlement. It screams to a government that despite all the promises that this would be a new, different kind of politics is as bad, if not worse, than the one that went before. It comes after former Conservative MP Nadine Doris defected to Reform UK, claiming the Tory party was dead. Joining us now from the Reform Party conference is the Standard's Chief Political Correspondent Rachel Burford.

1:48Rachel, it's been a big day for political news, hasn't it? Nigel Farage was actually due to speak. I'll give his leader's address at 4.10. We got 20 minutes notice earlier today that that had been brought forward to one o 'clock after Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner resigned over the stamp duty scandal that's been kind of engulfing the government for the last week. He really wants to seize those headlines and get his message across to broadcasters and journalists and to the public as quickly as possible. He's willing to shift the timetable of very short notice and risk perhaps a few fewer reform delegates in the hall to get himself on the news quicker after this big breaking news this afternoon.

2:28So what message is Nigel Farage trying to get across? So it's always really interesting with Nigel Farage. He's different to the other leaders in that he got up on stage, there was masses of fireworks as he got on the stage. He was introduced by Andrea Jenkins. She came on stage in a glittery jumpsuit with a massive Union Jack badge singing. And then she sort of introduced him onto the stage and there was these massive pyrotechnics that came out. You can't imagine someone like Keir Starmer or even Kemi Badenoch doing. In his speech, he started with what's going on with the current government at the moment.

3:02With Nigel Farage, he's sort of almost ad-libs. He doesn't seem to have notes in front of him, doesn't seem to be reading off an autocue. He's kind of off the cuff, which is different to the other party leaders. He sort of made fun of the current situation in government about Angela Leroyna suggested she was a hypocrite for criticising other people for avoiding tax when it turns out she had done the same. He sort of talked about the crisis facing Keir Starmer's government at the moment and how reform are leading in a lot of the polls at the moment with the public. And then he also said that we've got local elections coming up next year.

3:33He made a mention of London saying all 32 London boroughs are up for council re-election next year. Reform will be taking that very seriously is what he said. So he wants reform members to volunteer themselves as councillors. And then he said, we're not due an election until 2029. But he is predicting that will actually be in 2027 because of the sort of floundering of Sir Keir Starmer's government at the moment and how he's had a few ministers have to resign over scandals already and a few more quits. He's got perhaps a problem with Jeremy Corbyn starting his far left party. And he said that it's going to cause a split in the Labour Party.

4:11There may be some Labour MPs that think to themselves, I've got a better chance of being re-elected if I defect to this far left party instead. So he's predicting that the general election will come much sooner than we think. That was sort of the gist of his speech. Why do you think reform is growing in popularity? We are seeing a much more polarised political landscape than we have seen previously. Since COVID really, when everyone was stuck inside for the year and a half, there was a lot of anger about the way the government reacted to that situation. There was fines and party gates. And I think that really diminished trust in sort of our authorities.

4:50And then there was the kind of collapse of the conservative government where you had Boris Johnson ousted and then Liz Truss only lasting less than two months in power. And then Rishi Sunak coming in and all these ministers quitting and, you know, it felt like we were getting a new cabinet minister every week at one point. And I think that really diminished trust in sort of mainstream politics and has allowed smaller parties with more extreme views, whether that be left or right, capture the public's imagination a bit more. Obviously, America has been going through it for many years now, and we're seeing it all over Europe as well.

5:27Jafar's just running on this ticket of I'm not the other guys, despite the fact he has been around in British politics for decades now, really. He's billing himself as something different and fresh that has captured some people's imaginations. But he's never been put to the test or had to deliver, has he? He has never been properly tested. There is a lot of criticism of him in the House of Commons for not being a particularly good constituency MP. He tried to run many times as an MP and failed. He's a piece of evil in the sort of Brexit years. And now he is an MP. There's a lot of talk about him always going over to America when he should be in the Commons, and not holding perhaps as many surgeries in his constituency as he should.

6:08He is a sort of charismatic, I suppose you'd describe him as leader. People do listen to him. He doesn't seem to be reading off notes. He has this kind of authenticity, I guess. A lot of people do hate him. I was speaking to some delegates this morning who are here at Reform who used to be Tory supporters and one actually used to be a Labour supporter. And they were saying, one thing you can say about Nigel Farage is he's not really a hypocrite. He has been running on this anti-Europe ticket for years and years and years before it was really popular. And now that Nadine Doris has defected to the party, is that a significant blow for the Tories?

6:40I don't know if it's a particularly big blow to the Tories. I think Nigel Farage does have to be a bit careful because today during his leader speech, she was introduced by former Tory MP Andrea Jenkins. And then he did his speech and then he introduced former Tory cabinet minister Nadine Doris. Both of those women were massive Boris Johnson loyalists, would defend him to the hilt over party gates. And they were part of the Boris Johnson era very much and defining figures of that. I think it was interesting to see Nigel Farage coming on the main stage sandwiched between two formatory MPs. But I think he does have to be a little bit careful that he's not turning reform into the Conservative Party 2.0 because people rejected massively the Conservative Party at the last general election.

7:26If they suddenly see reform bringing in all these former Conservative politicians, I don't think that is a particularly good look. When I've spoken to some reform officials here, they have actually been Tory MPs that have said they want her defect and they've actually turned them down. So they're not just accepting anyone is their sort of line. There may be a perception in the public that these people have already failed in government. Why would we re-elect them again whenever the next general election is? Finally, do you have anything else to add? At the last election, after the total collapse of the Conservative administration, there was a lot of anger in this country about what happened during COVID and then what happened with the sort of administrations collapsing over and over again.

8:08Sir Keir Starmer won an absolute landslide victory. It wasn't necessarily because there was huge support and huge enthusiasm for the Labour Party or his policies. It was a sort of you're not the other guys sort of situation. And I think maybe Nigel Farage risks coming into government if he does on the back of a sane kind of feeling. There's a lot of anger at Labour now. They have not lived up to expectations from a lot of people who were Labour supporters. And that may result in a change of government in the next election. It could be the same sort of thing. It's just like, we'll give another party a go.

8:42But then when you're actually in government, you do have to deliver and you do have to make changes. And you can't just go on media rounds and come up with some good quotes and slogans. You've actually got to govern the country, which is an extremely difficult job. Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, Cathy and Heathcliff are returning to our screens, but not as you know them. We'll see you back here in just a moment. Welcome back.

9:45that was a snippet from the trailer of Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights which will be released on Valentine's Day next year the film adaptation of Emily Bronte's 1847 classic novel stars Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi and Owen Cooper and is based on the original story of passionate obsessive love between Katherine Earnshaw and the foundling Heathcliff. Fennell previously won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in her 2021 film Promising Young Women and directed the 2023 thriller Sulkburn. But it's fair to say the Wuthering Heights trailer has caused a stir, especially among ardent Bronte fans.

10:26Joining us now is the standards culture writer India Block. India, this is far from a traditional period drama. What are some of the main inaccuracies compared with Bronte's book? It definitely looks like it's going to be a different kind of adaptation. So number one, Margot Robbie. We already knew she'd been cast as Kathy Earnshaw. Kathy in the books doesn't make it to 20. She's about 18 or 19 when she dies and then she's only turning up again as a ghost. Margot Robbie is 35 and they're keeping her natural and enhanced blonde hair whereas Kathy is famously a brunette so I think for sort of fans of the book who really identify with a young brunette heroine that's a bit jarring.

11:11Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff he's 28 so there's a bit of an age gap. Personally I think it's okay actresses can play younger. It looks like director Emerald Fennell is going for a different kind of dynamic here. The costumes, real experts will get sniffy. There's been quite prominent shots of Robbie as Kathy wearing a white wedding dress with this kind of tiara and a veil. You know, Bothering Heights published in 1847, most women would not be wearing white for their wedding. Even upper class women would have been wearing a sort of best dress. there's kind of a milkmaid outfit she has going on in one stable scene I know one thing that will definitely rile up costume experts is that there's a shot of a corset getting sort of cinched really tight against a bare back corsets were expensive and made to measure usually you'd have never worn them against bare skin you would have been wearing them with a sort of chemise or a shift underneath but obviously sexier to have the strings biting into bare flesh.

12:20We knew from test screenings that it was going to be quite an erotic take. This is Emerald Fennell who did Salt Burn and gave us bath water masturbation scenes and someone making love to a grave. Personally, and again don't come for me Emily Bronte fans, I think that's an interesting take on Wuthering Heights. It's definitely a messed up piece of Victorian literature. Victorians famously very repressed, a lot of it is subtext, but Cathy and Heathcliff were raised as pseudo-siblings, although there were some class elements in that. So they're romance. It's forbidden because he's of a different class, it's forbidden because he's racially ambiguous, and also there's kind of an incest-y vibe.

13:06And in the text, Heathcliff does go and dig up Cathy's grave because he wants to be sort of buried next to her and not next to her husband, Linton. It's very open to interpretation what he does when he digs her up and her body has been preserved in all its beauty by the Moors. Some academics have suggested that he interferes with her corpse. Emeril Fennell is sort of digging it into the text and then pushing it to an extreme. As I mentioned up for debate about Heathcliff's ethnicity, he in the text is described as having a very dark complexion, he's of unknown parented, the Brontes are writing around a time where the slave trade was still very active.

13:49A lot of recent adaptations, more sort of faithful quote unquote, have cast actors of colour in the role of Heathcliff But this is by no means out of step with greater, longer back cinema history. I mean, Ray Fiennes famously played Heathcliff at one point. I think Tom Hardy's been in the role. It's mainly gone to white actors, but that has riled people up who are looking for more, understandably, more roles for actors where it could have gone to a person of colour or a black actor. that casting a lordy, he's very tall, he's very imposing, but he is a white guy, is understandably seen as a disappointment from several quarters.

14:32And what did you make of Charlie XCX on the soundtrack? Personally, I loved it. I think this is, again, part of Fennell's putting her own stamp on it. It's going to be sort of anachronistic. I think having a contemporary needle drop is very popular in cinema right now. I don't think that she's really out of pocket doing that. I think it also harks back to Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette and that sort of playing fast and loose with history. So by putting a remix of Charlie's Everything is Romantic over it, she's really setting the tone that it's going to be bold, it's going to be contemporary, there's going to be some jarring tonal shifts maybe.

15:19The trailer is highly erotic. There's a lot of sexual tension. Surely this was to be expected from Enmold Fennell. I think this is exactly what Fennell was setting out to do. There's kind of all these lingering scenes of bread getting kneaded and yolks being cracked and fingered. We've had some really spicy details revealed from early audience test screenings about sort of masturbation and ejaculation and public hangings. again I think for now as someone who likes to sort of poke around in what makes good taste what makes bad taste but again I don't think that's necessarily problematic I'm thinking of another recent Valentine's Day release of Nosferatu which also really went there with some sort of gross scary sexy stuff this is a romance but a gothic horror at the same time and for Victorians at the time there would have been things that would have shocked them that would have sort of got their pulses racing obviously 150 years on there's different things you have to sort of push at different buttons to to shock or disgust and you know disgust and arousal are so close to each other that you know they're almost a horseshoe or two sides of the same coin

16:44and that's the standard for all the latest news head to standard.co.uk if you'd like to get in touch please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk we'll be back here on monday at 5 p.m we'll see you then